Beginning our 8th year and over 3000 pages. A blog for fans of Track and Field from the 1950's and 60's, culled from various articles in sports journals of the day with added commentaries from readers who lived and ran and coached in that era.
We're the equivalent of an American Legion post of Track and Field but without cheap beer. You may contact us directly at irathermediate@gmail.com or write a comment at the end of a given posting.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

v5 n 17 Part 3 John Lawler saga

1960
SUMMERTIME

Episode
III: A BANANA AND A DIME

After
Bakersfield, Boshart, Denis, and I travelled on to the venue for the
US Olympic Trials, Palo Alto, which is just south of San Francisco.
We parted company with Don Boshart and the VW when he deposited Denis
and me at the front door of an attractive home in the nearby suburb
of Mountain View.

Our
first act when we arrived was to examine the state of our finances,
as the fruit picking season, our primary hope of employment, had not
yet commenced. Three and a half weeks had passed since the end of
school, at which time our joint account was already thin. Since then
we had been on a strict austerity program as our income over the
period had been less than minimal ─ nil, to be exact. We emptied
our pockets onto the kitchen table of our summer home. Our assets,
all that remained to us in total, were a banana and a dime. Yes, one
banana and one dime. As I think about that, I wonder what was
considered below the official poverty line in the US during the
summer of 1960.

At
about the time we were calculating our net worth, a young journalist
from New York was circulating in the Palo Alto area making contact
with the cream of the US track athletes as they gathered for the
forthcoming trials. His name was Dick Sorkin, and he was a sports
writer for Newsday,
Long Island’s local newspaper. Its circulation, I believe, was
about two million copies, mostly limited to Long Island. As well as
covering the Olympic Trials for his paper, Dick wanted to do a piece
about foreign athletes who had university scholarships. In
particular, he wanted to delve into what they did, how they managed,
during the summer months when universities were not in session. He
already knew that in those days very few flew home for the vacation
period. I suspect that through his connection with the sporting
journal Track
and Field News, which
was based in Palo Alto, he had come across either Barrie Almond or
Pat Clohessy, Aussies who had some part-time work there. Whatever the
source, he had heard that Denis and I were in residence and were a
prime source for his article.

We
were introduced to Dick, who suggested that we jot down some of our
experiences, expectations, hopes, and disappointments. As we did not
as yet have work, we were happy to oblige, with the help of our
housemate

Al
Lawrence, who had some journalistic ambitions and was a deft hand
with the pen. We put together a treatise about our experience of the
summer months to that point (which was later augmented by the tale of
our fruit picking, covered later in my next saga). Dick massaged our
efforts into an article that was later published with the same title
I’ve used for this episode, “A Banana and a Dime.”

We
didn’t think much about what we had written. We were enjoying the
attempt at composing a newspaper article. The circulation of Newsday,
as we’ve said, was in Long Island, New York, a fair distance from
our Alma Mater in Abilene, Texas. The impression we left in what we
wrote was that the college we attended was largely responsible for
our sorry state of affairs. No harm, we thought, and it made a good
story. Besides, Newsday was hardly read south of the Hudson River,
let alone the Mason Dickson Line -- or so we thought. Of course, we
had always known that we had to fend for ourselves when summer
arrived, and when the coach left to take part in the Olympic Trials,
Denis and I were already securely ensconced in the Bible selling
training program with work assured.

What
we hadn’t counted on was that Dick’s article was so well received
that it was sold to the wire service and syndicated to sixty papers
across the country ─ some of them in Texas. You might say that we
were not exactly ‘top of the pops’ when we returned to ACC in the
fall. And it was some time before our names appeared in any publicity
released for the track team. Can’t blame them, I guess. We were way
off base saying what we did. Have to say though, after this
experience, the phrase ‘power of the press’ took on a very
personal meaning for Denis and me, a good lesson to learn early. With
time and a few good wins, harmony was gradually restored between us
and the administration. By the time I graduated, all was
forgiven…including a later brief suspension. But that is another
story.

As
a final comment to the banana and dime saga, four years after the
article was written, Charlotte and I, then married and living in
Connecticut, attended Dick and Barbara Sorkin’s splendiferous
wedding on Long Island. He and his wife, Barbara, visited us later at
our home in Woodmont.

Friendships
are a vital component of survival, especially if the family is not
around to assist when times get hard. Both my family and Denis’s
were working class. The phrase means little now, but then it meant
that what little financial assistance they could give went on our
fares to the United States. The provision of a ship berth to Hawaii
and then a flight to Abilene were not only generous; they were all
the help our families could manage. We both steadfastly resisted
calling upon them for more. In this light you’ll understand that
the three Australian runners from Houston we met at Bakersfield were
not just casual running mates we skylarked with when we went to the
party there. I mentioned in the previous episode that Barrie Almond,
Pat Clohessy, and Al Lawrence were club mates of Denis’s at Botany
Harriers in Sydney. Although I ran in a separate club, both Denis and
I were trained by Al Lawrence. As well, I trained most evenings after
work with the Botany runners. Then on Saturday I’d compete against
them. For years we trained, competed, and socialized. When all five
of us ended up in the United States on college scholarships, the
bonds were drawn even closer. In many ways we were family.

And
that family-style friendship was just what we needed, and got, when
Boshart deposited us in Mountain View. By good fortune, Pat Clohessy
knew the owners of the house I’ve mentioned. I’m guessing they
were track fans. And as they were going on summer vacation, they
offered the house to him, Barrie Almond, and Al Lawrence to occupy
and care for ─ a decision they may regret even today. Somehow,
Ollan Cassell also appeared on the scene in need of accommodation,
and of course, they couldn’t turn away Denis and me when we
appeared on their doorstep like two orphaned children minus their
cribs and clutching their banana and their dime.

Accommodation
for three was now stretched to cope with six. There were three
bedrooms with four single beds and a double. Yes, the dreaded double
bed again. I suspect this was the reason Boshart declined the
invitation to stay a night or two. As usual, we drew lots for the
beds. The two short straws were bedfellows for the summer. This time
Ollan and I were the ‘short strawers’. That night, our first
night of twenty-eight, Ollan politely inquired whether I wore
pyjamas. It was a real comfort to hear Ollan ask that question. I
didn’t know him that well. Yet.

Now
a bit about our summer companions: Al was the elder statesman. He had
already been selected to run for Australia at the Rome Olympics in
the 5000 meters and the 10,000 meters. At the previous Olympics in
1956 he had collected a bronze medal when he finished third behind
Vladimir Kuts in the 10,000 meters. Alan wasn’t looking for work,
as he was focused on rounding out his training for the forthcoming
Games.

Pat
Clohessy had aspirations to join the priesthood of the Catholic
Church as a young man, but his poor vision was looked upon as a
hindrance to that profession, so he eventually accepted a scholarship
to run for the University of Houston, where impaired vision was not a
constraint. Pat’s nickname was “the village idiot.” Now don’t
get the wrong impression. Pat did not lack ‘smarts’; in fact,
where intellect is concerned, Pat could give all of us half a
straight start. But he did have a charming naivety that tended to
endear him to his companions and all that knew him. Later in his life
Pat was appointed as head distance coach of the Australian Institute
of Sport and was also the personal coach of Australia’s renowned
marathon runner Rob DeCastella. Here’s a picture of Pat the scholar
in our Mountain View retreat, studying even then for the next
semester.

Barrie
Almond was the practical one of the group. He, more than anyone, ran
and organized the household and most of the daily activities. As a
half-miler and miler he had the distinction of finishing a close
second to Herb Elliot in an Australian 880 yards championship. Very
few runners ever made it into the frame at the end of a race against
Herb Elliot. The only other one I can think of, off hand, who did is
Merv Lincoln, in a mile, when Herb was still a teenager, and even
then Merv was second like all the rest.

My
bedfella, Ollan Cassell, a part-Cherokee, and a great 440 runner for
Houston U., would later, as I have already written, ascend to the
highest administrative level in US amateur athletics: Secretary of
the AAU. In 1960 though, as a member of the Houston track team, he
was an easy-going fellow, quiet and studious. He was also troubled.
Ollan and his future wife Kathy were having a romantic disorder, and
as Kathy was in Houston, there were frequent late night telephone
conversations spoken in hushed tones followed by hours of tossing and
turning in our double bed. They eventually got the problems all
worked out, I’m happy to say, and, the last I heard, they were
still married after fifty years and had six children, an achievement
in itself.

How
Ollan succeeded in becoming “boss cocky” of the AAU amazes me. He
never displayed any obvious administrative skills while a member of
the summer household. Nor did he reveal any of the characteristics
later ascribed to him during what some have dubbed his “reign of
terror” as Secretary of the AAU. Years later, the occasional
awestruck person would ask if it was really true that I knew Ollan
Cassell personally. “Know him?” I’d say, “I slept with him
for four weeks in the summer of 1960!” Not sure what that did for
Ollan’s reputation. Those who knew me thought little about it.

The
decision to allow three Australians ─ later, five ─ and one love
sick Cherokee to take possession of their home for a summer was
probably not the best choice for the family who owned our Mountain
View residence. It’s not that we weren’t conscious of the need to
do the right thing. In fact, we made every effort to be model
tenants. There were no parties or lady visitors or excessive drinking
bouts. Drinking was heavily constrained by our lack of money. What
was lacking was ‘house nouse’.1
We were all dorm dwellers and not fully house trained. As a
consequence, accidents happened. Pat, for instance, put a pot of
potatoes on the stove and either forgot to put water in it or failed
to see that it had all boiled away. (You can see how he got his
nickname.) Barrie tried to redeem the situation by plucking the pot
from the flame, but by that time, the handle was red hot, so he
dropped it onto the laminated kitchen counter, producing a permanent
scorched decoration as a reminder of our visit. Pat’s other
contribution was allowing his oily hair (Remember, this is 1960.) to
rub against the wallpaper of the master bedroom where he slept. We
did try to remove the small stain…and managed to expand it into
what looked like a substantial slug track. Not a good idea. There
were other mishaps too, but the worst was of my making.

I
had spent an extended time in the back yard without a shirt one
afternoon and was displaying a nice rosy-red glow on the shoulders
and back. Here I am in the garden of Mountain View. You can see what
a prime candidate I was for a sunburn.

I
secured a volunteer to apply some lotion to the affected areas and
plonked down semi-naked on what looked like a small ornamental stool
that served as a side table. “Delicate” may be a more apt
description than “ornamental,” because its edges snapped off and
collapsed onto the floor in what seemed to be a jigsaw of a couple of
dozen pieces of assorted sizes, grouped around the legs, which were
broken but still attached to a small part of the top surface. I spent
countless hours reassembling this table, carefully gluing each piece
of wood into place. I did my best, but when the restoration work was
completed and my masterpiece was placed in position, it had a decided
list (so much so, in fact, that the group of shells placed there as
decoration occasionally slid off).

After
six weeks’ holiday, the owners of the house ─ I think their
family name was Christianson ─ returned. “Christian” by name,
but when they saw the fruits of their generosity, their response was
less than we were hoping “Christians” might display. Who could
blame them? Total forgiveness would have been a very big ask.

Prior
to their return, Al had departed for the Olympics, Ollan had gone to
New Jersey to meet with Kathy and her parents, and Denis, Barrie,
Pat, and I had moved to another home in Sunnyvale, where once more we
were the recipients of the kindness frequently displayed by generous
Americans, and again we were allowed to stay rent free. This time,
happily, the home survived our stay intact.

Pat,
a brave man of principle, decided that he should remain at the
Mountain View home to explain what had happened. He genuinely
believed the owners would be very understanding. In retrospect, it
was too much to expect of mere mortals. So the morning they arrived,
we had an urgent call from Pat for rescue as the Christiansons were
about to physically eject him from their home (which they did). We
had by this stage purchased a car (more about that in the next
episode), so Barrie and I went to pick him up.

There
is surely no sight more forlorn than that of a man sitting in the
gutter with his bag and a box of cornflakes beside him.